Books I Read in 2008

It's been a while, but I can't forgo the annual reading list.

Books I Finished:
1. The English Patient by Michael Ondaatje
2. Middlesex by Jeffrey Eugenides
3. East of Eden by John Steinbeck
4. Brief Encounters with Che Guevara by Ben Fountain
5. The Looming Tower: Al Qaeda and the Road to 9/11 by Lawrence Wright

It's a shamefully paltry list, to be sure. I hadn't realized it would be so short. What it lacks in quantity, though, it makes up for in quality. Fabulous books all! If you read no other book this year, you should read The Looming Tower. It's a masterpiece.

Books I Started:
1. Friday Night Lights by Buzz Bissinger
2. A Fine Balance by Rohinton Mistry
3. Tortilla Curtain by T. Coraghessan Boyle

I liked the first two of these. I just couldn't make it through all the football in the first and all the pages in the second.

McCain Gets What He Deserves on The View

Perhaps McCain and Palin have brought out the best in women after all. The ladies of The View gave the straight-talking "maverick" a little more straight talk than he could handle today. I sensed genuine outrage at being underestimated as a gender. McCain's hosts seemed insulted that he would even offer Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin as a legitimate alternative to Hillary Clinton. Not even the famously conservative Elisabeth Hasselbeck seemed willing to come to the senator's aid.

One thing they failed to mention: You are where you are because of the "Old Boy Network," John McCain. You'd do well to remember that.

The State of Journalism

HOT JOB!

The Institute of Scrap Recycling Industries needs an associate editor for their association magazine. The position pays $45K to $50K. See journalismjobs.com for more info. It's one of the few jobs posted.

On the Rebound

It's a rare and wondrous thing to remember the moment you fell in love. I knew Buffy the Vampire Slayer creator Joss Whedon would forever hold my heart mere seconds into Season 6, Episode 7 of his cult hit, otherwise known as Buffy, the musical episode. It was the beginning of a torrid affair that ended in a long, not-so-final goodbye and, of course, the purchase of the seven-season DVD box set by as true and generous a friend as any Scooby, who bequeathed said treasure to me.

And now, behold Dr. Horrible's Sing-Along Blog, from who else but the master of fun himself and starring Neil Patrick Harris, Felicia Day, and Nathan Fillion. "All this talent got together in the midst of last year's Hollywood writer's strike specifically to produce something for the Web," according to an NPR All Things Considered story. "They had no idea whether the project would be a success."

I watched it today. I've fallen in love all over again.

Wonderful World of Maryland

Dude. I'm in a coffee shop in Annapolis, Md., and just saw a guy in full Revolutionary War dress (complete with brass buttons, gold tassels, and ribbon securing a gray ponytail) zoom past on a Segway. Bizarro.

Correction 10:40 a.m.: Actually, in the interest of honest reporting, he's not zooming at all. I thought he might at any moment, but instead he continues to loiter outside, flirting with women and talking on his cell phone. OH! There he goes zooming at last.

Things I Kind of Love

I was perusing Good magazine today, theoretically doing "research" for a story on steak (hard-hitting, I know), when I stumbled upon a service piece about T-shirts, which I tell myself I read because Steve has a T-shirt collection, not because I dig front-of-the-book fluff. They featured eight "T-shirts that make a difference."

The shirt from a company called Rosa Loves caught my eye because it was both affordable ($25) and cute. When I went to the Web site, I fell in love with Rosa myself. The company offers limited edition shirts that support different causes (and by causes, I mean people, like the Sharkar family in rural Bangladesh who live in extreme poverty. "Mr. Girendro Sharkar lived with a growing tumor on his throat," the site says. "He fought this illness until he could no longer eat, drink or speak. Mr. Sharkar passed away leaving behind his wife and five young children in their thatch house with walls patched with newspaper and magazine pages." Rosa Loves stops selling the shirt once enough money is raised for each "cause." Find out more here.


And I read about kiva.org, a microlending site, in Domino. You can buy a gift card for a friend and simultaneously help someone in a third-world country start a business. Once the loan is repaid, the friend can lend the money to help someone else or cash out. I love that idea too.

Here's another, and then I'll stop (I'm getting on my own nerves): Heifer International. Give the gift of a beast of burden. I mean, who doesn't want a water buffalo? And at $250, it sounds like a steal.

2007 Book List

This is the yearly roundup to the best of my recollection. I clearly started more books than I finished. I went through a non-commital phase, but I will find my way back to many of the lovely novels I started but failed to finish. Others (like Don Delillo's The Names) I gave up on two-thirds of the way through and have washed my hands of entirely. Despite the paltry list, this was fun. Shout out to Ciaran who lit a fire under my ass. Happy reading!

Books I read in 2007:

1. Arlington Park by Rachel Cusk
2. The Brief History of the Dead by Kevin Brockmeier
3. The Yacoubian Building by Alaa Al Aswany
4. The Devil in the White City by Erik Larson
5. Tex & Sugar: A Big City Kitty Ditty by Barbara Johansen Newman
6. Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince by JK Rowling
7. Eat, Pray, Love by Elizabeth Gilbert

Books I started but didn't finish:

1. The Namesake by Jhumpa Lahiri
2. God is Not Great by Christopher Hitchens
3. A Wedding in December by Anita Shreve
4. The Best American Travel Writing 2006 edited by Tim Cahill
5. The Names by Don Delillo
6. Paris to the Moon by Adam Gopnik
7. In the Eye of the Sun by Ahdaf Soueif
8. Middlesex by Jeffrey Eugenides
9. Snow by Orhan Pamuk
10. The History of Love by Nicole Krauss

Books I listened to on CD:
1. The City of Fallen Angels by John Berendt
2. A Thousand Splendid Suns by Khaled Hosseini